It probably goes without saying that a child named Moe doesn’t start the race with everyone else and can be expected to have some, euphemistically speaking, developmental difficulties.* And, of course, parents that would name their kid Moe probably named his brothers Larry and Curly just to make things worse. So it’s not surprising that the ultimate result of this poor choice in child naming would be an addled and dimwitted adult with an enhanced sense of victim-hood and a bad attitude.

Sadlynauts, meet Red State’s Moe Lane!

Seven months since the Wasilla Church Burning … and no arrests; no updates; and no real indication that the federal government is taking seriously an organized attempt to murder mothers and children by setting their church on fire.

Of course, that might be because there are no leads. But Moe, who became awful smart watching the TeeVee, knows that all crimes can be solved. In point of fact, the FBI keeps a gothy-looking girl in some secret basement lab in DC. She can solve any crime. If they had just brought her a cinder from the fire, she would have sniffed it, typed a number into a computer and, the next thing you know, there would be the arsonists driver’s license on her screen!

So, of course, Obama knows exactly who the arsonist is and is protecting him because he’s a Democrat. In fact, Obama is sending the arsonist to arson school so he won’t fuck up the next time he tries to kill Christian children and women while praying.

The response to this should not break down along partisan political lines; I will be pleasantly surprised if this turns out to be the case.

Well, of course, it will break down along partisan lines because Democrats are actively in favor of burning down churches, with or without people in them. In fact, the only churches that Democrats don’t favor burning down are churches where human sacrifices, black masses and gay marriages are performed.

New thread!

I’ve had this running thought all day, perhaps because I was watching it on TV in HD for the first time, that this is kind of like Ben Kenobi letting Darth Vader strike him down. Palin is not going to run in 2012, but by doing this she can now become Barack Obama’s worst nightmare, and help rebuild the opposition to Obama.

And then Trig blows up the White House and it’s all, ‘Awesome!’ but then he and Bristol almost get it on and it’s like ‘Ewwww’ and the prequels with Hayden Christensen in blackface make a ton of money but the die-hard fans are mostly disappointed.

Also, ‘watching it in HD’ has precisely what to do with the which-what-why now?

Hanx: ignatov in comments

ABOVE: Jim Hoft demonstrates his preferred method for finding dates

Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit:
White House Garden Tests Positive For Lead

• Wouldn’t it be hilarious if the First Family gets lead poisoning from their own garden?

Palin Resigning [Jonah Goldberg]

Well, aside from my timing being impeccable, the best I can say is I’m flabbergasted.

Not running again could make sense as a pre-presidential move. Resigning strikes me as very strange. I do hope all is well with her family and that there’s the best possible reason for this fairly shocking news.

Oh, and: It’s not my fault!

‘Timing’? ‘It’s not my fault’? What could Jonah possibly be talking about? Aha – seems he splooged a mash note Palin’s way today:

A Letter to Sarah

Dear Governor Palin,

You’re blowing it.

With all the rampant speculation about Palin’s motives going around, this the first I’ve seen it theorized that she quit because Jonah Goldberg ordered her to fellate him. Talk about ‘central’ to your ‘point’ … rowwrrr!

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

Rather, it’s a wonderful new column from the Moonie Times’ Diana West:

Iraq is Victorious… Over the ‘Foreign’ U.S.?

I’ve been stewing over something really lousy that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been saying since June 20: that Iraqis have won a “great victory” over the “foreign presence in Iraq.”

That “great victory,” as he calls it, is the June 30 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq’s cities. That “foreign presence,” as he calls it, is the United States — the thousands of mainly young American men who have fought a vicious enemy under the harshest conditions for more than six long years, with 4,321 Americans killed, many thousands wounded, often grievously so, and some small, tortured number wrongfully ensnared by the U.S. military justice system in apparent deference to Iraqi political considerations.

“Ingrate” doesn’t begin to describe this al-Maliki creep — or, as all too many conservatives and Bush loyalists persist in thinking of him, our Iraqi “ally.” But let’s skip the labels and stick to the implications of the Iraqi prime minister’s rhetoric: He has transformed long-term American sacrifice on Iraq’s behalf into a residual “foreign presence” over which he now declares Iraqi victory.

Speaking of Cheney, he really has been doing his bit to keep the spirit of 2005 alive — and in the frankly dull Age of Obama, this has not been unappreciated by liberal comedy bloggers. Mocking garden-variety stupidity is one thing, but stupidity that is in a position of authority is the real mother lode … I’ve been pretty much mailing it in since the election because teasing the politically marginalized just doesn’t instill one with the same sense of purpose, no matter how venal the wingnuts remain.

Which is why Diana West’s little diatribe caught my attention. The scare quotes around ‘foreign’ are pleasing enough, but trotting out ‘ingrate’ really puts this bit over the top — it’s a throwback to a time when the invasion of Iraq was still being defended by its architects as a great victory for human rights, a little trip down memory lane for anyone who ever felt the guilty thrill of encountering a particularly juicy example of the up-is-downism that propped up that earlier era’s conventional wisdom on aggressive war.

It brings some small joy to my heart to see that someone out there in wingnuttia is still defending our Baghdad satrapy in the old, neocon fashion — by flat-out denying that our occupation of another country is really an occupation, that we are not gate-crashing foreigners in Iraq at all but rather invited guests who occasionally shoot our hosts and blow up their property.

The Bush years were awful, of course, but you have to admit they were also awfully fun. Almost enough to make me want to tempt fate and hope for Cheney-Palin in 2012, if only just to relieve the ennui.

Mother Palin [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Who knows all the reasons — Todd and Sarah Palin, presumably fully understand.

Listening to her, it seems like this is a combination of stepping back and moving forward. Stepping back, because it’s way too overwhelming to be Sarah Palin, political phenom, Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, and Sarah Palin, wife and mother. I don’t know that anyone can fulfill all those roles well, simultaneously. And we’re unrealistic, I think, when we assume people can or should.

One reservation I’ve always had about Sarah Palin has to do with her family. If she is stepping down because of what politics has done to her family, because of something in her family life she doesn’t want to see as David Letterman fodder, because it’s impossible to be governor, a star, and a mom to an infant … this is good. It demonstrates good judgment and priorities.

Uh, well gee. Barack Obama is somehow able to be a political phenomenon, a father and husband and the president of the freaking United States. We don’t elect people because they aren’t able to multitask, K-Lo.

UPDATE: This is not a normal person:

I thought that she still had a shot to win the GOP nomination before watching the video. Then I watched the video. Mitt Romney is popping champagne as we speak.

UPDATE II: K-Lo has been reduced to sad blubbering. Look at this:

Gerry Seib’s Romney Time Timing Is Better Then He Knew?

Keep her away from the sharp objects, someone!

UPDATE III: The nail in the coffin — Bill Kristol thinks this was strategic brilliance:

Kristol: A Contrarian Take

If Palin wants to run in 2012, why not do exactly what she announced today? It’s an enormous gamble – but it could be a shrewd one.

After all, she’s freeing herself from the duties of the governorship. Now she can do her book, give speeches, travel the country and the world, campaign for others, meet people, get more educated on the issues – and without being criticized for neglecting her duties in Alaska. I suppose she’ll take a hit for leaving the governorship early – but how much of one? She’s probably accomplished most of what she was going to get done as governor, and is leaving a sympatico lieutenant governor in charge.

And haven’t conservatives been lamenting the lack of a national leader? Well, now she’ll try to be that. She may not succeed. Everything rests on her talents, and on her performance. She’ll be under intense and hostile scrutiny, and she’ll have to perform well.

All in all, it’s going to be a high-wire act. The odds are against her pulling it off. But I wouldn’t bet against it.

Posted by William Kristol on July 3, 2009 05:06 PM | Permalink

UPDATE IV: It just occurred to me that these things always occur in threes. So who’s next? Bobby Jindal, do you have a lobster fetish we should know about?

What Brent Bozell meant to say in his “letter” to Oliver Stone:

Dear Oliver:

Remember when you and I were on Bill Maher? You know, back when he was funny. You know before he said something I disagreed with about the 9/11 terrorists after which nothing he ever said could ever be funny again. In fact, he could tell that hilarious joke about Al Sharpton and the watermelon — that joke still just slays me if anyone else tells it — and I wouldn’t crack a smile. No siree!

Well, anyway, as you might recall, you and I were on the Maher show together, and it was all fun until I quoted some interview which was in some paper that I’ve totally forgotten but I swear to God I didn’t make up. In that completely unfabricated and 100 percent real interview you said you were a historian and I said you weren’t a historian, you were a socialist which is the exact opposite of a historian. You got mad and said “Am not” and I said “Are too” and you said “Am not” and so I kicked you in the nuts under the table which totally shut you up for a minute.

Well, I’m writing this letter to apologize, not for kicking you in the nuts, but for saying you weren’t a historian. You are a historian. You’re a shitty historian. Isn’t this the best kind of apology ever? ROFLOL. I’m sorry I said you were prick. You aren’t a prick. You’re a syphilitic prick. I could apologize like this all day.

Well, anyway, let me stop cracking myself up and get back to my apology. You are a historian, leaving aside that movie W which I didn’t bother to see but which I absolutely know was nothing but 2 hours of filthy liberal lies. But you’re a bad historian because you were just on Bill Maher again and you quoted that RINO Richard Nixon as saying that St. Ronald was a “dumb son of a bitch.” Nuh-uh. Reagan wasn’t dumb and to prove it I asked a bunch of Republicans who worked in the Reagan White House and they all said, to the man, that Reagan was so smart he could do the Sunday New York Times crossword in ink while blind-folded, could recite the value of pi to the three zillionth digit and even had read Heidegger’s Being and Time. In German. What do you have to say to that, Mr. Smartypants?

Best of all, I talked to Al Regnery, now that’s a real historian if there ever were one, even if he made up a story about his wife getting raped by a black burglar and even though he told a tiny little fib, when he was on Reagan’s anti-pornography commission, about the pornography the cops found in his house when they were investigating that other little fib about his wife getting raped.

Oh, and I apologize for calling you a “lousy historian,” because you’re not a historian but a big fat liar who blasphemes the greatest President who ever lived in the history of the entire universe.

Your BFF,

Brent

One of the abiding questions of interest to academic wingnutologists (such as the staff here at Sadly, No!) is the travel question. Why, we ask, do wingnuts travel to foreign countries? Creatures of habit, suspicious of strangers, monolingual junk food addicts and perpetual scolds, what exactly is in it for them? They wander about Rome complaining that they can’t find a Starbucks or Caribou Coffee anywhere. They return from Madrid complaining that not one restaurant served a taco salad. Imagine that, in the place that invented Mexican food, the locals eat raw ham and some kind of funny little fish called tapas.

So when I saw that Lisa Schiffren posted to America’s Shittiest Website™ from France, I could scarcely control my excitement. What news would she send us from l’Hexagone? What indignity would she report had been visited upon her by an un-shaven waiter, reeking of sweat, garlic and tobacco? How many vile shopwomen had shortchanged her? Well, kids, its better than that. Schiffren writes that the best place to eat in France is McDonald’s. Fuck the foie gras, she’s shoving another Royal Deluxe (that’s frog for Quarter Pounder with Cheese) down her craw every chance she gets.

Let’s join Lisa with her three children (Rush, Little Ronnie, and Ayn) at the Louvre:

[T]here is a lot of bad food in France — especially around tourist sites, including the great museums. I will not say what I paid for two sandwiches and two salads — all premade so unwanted ingredients could not be removed in advance — and a few soft drinks at the Louvre.

Well, certainly the best place to get a good idea of any country’s cuisine is around its biggest tourist sites. I too would be outraged if I went to a place overrun with tour buses and bought a pre-packaged sandwich only to discover that, rather than medium-rare Wagyu beef strips, artisanal goat cheese, a crisp mesclun garnish and hand-made aioli on a freshly-baked olive baguette, I got a ham sandwich on stale bread with wilted lettuce and two drops of acrid mustard. Who’d a thunk? Only the vile French could pull a stunt like that on an unsuspecting American.

And here’s another valuable travel tip from Lisa. When traveling abroad, rather than eating on the local schedule, insist on eating at the same time you’re used to eating at home:

Restaurant meals are available at very limited hours. You want lunch — it had better be between 12 and 2. Miss that and you can have a snack — but only if you are in a place big enough to have a range of restaurant types. Dinner starts at 7, no matter that you missed lunch and want a burger or a salad at 5, not ice cream or a beer.

Of course, the reason Lisa might not be able to get a burger at a restaurant in Paris at 5:00 may have more to do with where she was than what time it was. She’s in frigging Paris. You don’t find burgers on the menus in Paris any more than you can find civet de sanglier or tarte tatin on the menu at Chili’s or Applebee’s. And also, here’s a tip for Lisa. Every corner bar in France serves food, all sorts, all the time; you’re not just limited to beer and ice cream.

To explain these draconian dining hours, Lisa reaches deep into her bottomless well of nutty ideas. The reason is:

The French do not much like children

In that case, I’m amazed that French civilization didn’t disappear from the face of the earth centuries ago. But hold that thought about the French hating children for just a sec

I like the leisurely lunch as much as any journalist, of course. But not with my kids. …

She’s on vacation with her children but doesn’t want to eat nice lunches with them. Can’t you feel the love pouring from Lisa towards Rush, Little Ronnie and Ayn?

So it’s Le MacDo pour tout le monde. All I can add to this is that Lisa is clearly auditioning to be the successor to America’s Worst Mother™, formerly Meghan Gurdon, and that one day little Ayn will write a tearful memoir about how her self-absorbed mother dragged her by her pigtails through France, Le Happy Meal, her only source of nourishment, while Momma screamed at the shopkeepers who pretended not to speak English and made nasty remarks to the waiters who brought her, and overcharged her for, a bottle of Perrier every time she ordered a scotch and soda. The dust jacket will be illustrated with a picture of a young girl with her nose pressed against the window of a pâtisserie being beaten with a coat-hanger by a disagreeable woman in sweat pants and sneakers.

Scheuer to Beck: The only chance of saving America is … another Al Qaeda attack

… What’s striking about this clip is how closely it tracks some of the key tropes of nutroots paranoia during the Bush years. Now as then, it’s assumed that the greatest threat to the country is its own government. Now as then, the “solution” to getting the nation back on the right track involves some ghoulish catastrophic failure of national security (losing the Iraq war in Bush’s case, failing to prevent a new attack in this one). And now as then, because the president acted in a legally controversial way in one circumstance — Bush on “torture,” Obama on corporate takeovers — he’s instantly suspected of ruthless designs on the Constitution itself, irrespective of whether he actually has the support he’d need to change it.

Unfortunately, with few exceptions, Allah’s commenters do not appreciate his nuance:

It may seem alarmist, but a wakeup call is needed. It’s too bad that for most of the elites, in fact, all of them, one 9/11 wasn’t enough to change how they think.

keep the change on July 1, 2009 at 6:19 PM

***********************

It sounds terrible, and it would be completely horrible, but it is going to take America on it’s knees to wake people up.

If this is what it’s going to take,I pray for another way. I just don’t see it.

portlandon on July 1, 2009 at 6:19 PM

***********************

Y’know what’s scarier than all the crazy/paranoid-seeming warnings these guys are throwing out there? That both Beck and Scheuer have track records of being right far more often than not. :-(

aero on July 1, 2009 at 6:19 PM

***********************

I would love to take comfort in the fact that Beck is just a nut job. I have found no comfort in that assessment at all. I do not know what the tipping point will be. People are just not as pissed as I am. It does keep me awake at night, because I do not know what to do to fight this president and Congress. I do not know how to protect myself and my family. I thought I knew as of last fall. After Nov. 4th it all changed.

BetseyRoss on July 1, 2009 at 6:37 PM

***********************

Why is Hot Air so hostile to Glenn Beck?

He loves America, reveres the Constituion and bewails the collapse of our culture.

Got a problem with that?

guntotinglibertarian on July 1, 2009 at 6:54 PM

And the final word, from suzyk:

I hate to say this, but if there is going to be another terrorist attack (however, I think that Obama is a terrorist attack)I hope it happens in Washington D.C.

We have friends there and I told them to get their animals out of there to be safe and prepare.

I hope all these evil politicians are taken out. There, I said it. I have had it. This is not what this Country was formed on and what it’s all about. If it can’t be Washington, D.C. then please let it be San Francisco.

suzyk on July 1, 2009 at 10:32 PM

The horror! One-fifth of the meager return taxpayers have received so far from the ongoing bailout of stupid, amoral predators might be spread thinly amongst their most vulnerable victims! Why, for half that sum, we could hire a K Street brain trust to conduct a feasibility study on the merits of forming a working group tasked with determining the benefits of appointing a committee entrusted with selecting a blue-ribbon panel charged with getting to the bottom of why we shouldn’t be doing this sort of thing at all!

Later in the Dow-Jones story Malkin cites, we learn that this modern-day Robin Hood wants to reallocate 4/700ths of the funds we’ve earmarked for well-heeled pyramid schemers to yet more paupers. Should this sort of thing continue, we’ll soon be allowing our impoverished clerks to take Christmas Day off to spend time with their crippled children.

Are there no workhouses, &cetera?

Let’s face it. The American president has not exactly been on the wrong side…. But he has certainly not been on the right side. Not with his mincing and parsimoniously petty escalations of do-nothing rhetoric.

Because as any neocon will tell you, there are two sides to every conflict; one is purely good and the other unspeakably evil — there are no shades of gray. Then, in Geddy Lee shrillo voce, neocons will insist that if you choose not to decide/ You still have made a choice. Thus by the neocons’ reckoning, Obama, who has refused to involve himself much with the conflict lest he jeopardize the protesters he actually sympathizes with, is somehow objectively pro-Ahmadinejad.

One piece I commend to you is Fouad Ajami’s op-ed in the June 22 Wall Street Journal, “Obama’s Personal Tutorial: The president has to choose between the regime and the people in the streets.”

And that is really the choice.

Yeah, yeah. Standard neocon boilerplate: the macho tone, faux idealism, barely-masked cynicism, the overflowing mendacity. Then, in his concluding, sell-a-subscription paragraph, he says something interesting:

If you don’t you’ll have to wait until the rich little essays on the Iranian revolt go on-line. They are all informative, really each and every one of them. Let me especially commend one. It is by Nader Mousavizadeh, a former student, a good friend and past assistant editor of this magazine. Oh, yes, he is also a senior fellow at the Institute of Strategic Studies in London. Nader really knows what he is talking about, unlike many of those whose attitudes are drawn from their always cool and detached temperaments. I’ve learned much from his disciplined yet morally engaged mind, from this piece perhaps more than any other.

What a blurb! Somewhere, a jealous Jamie Kirchik just sobbed into his pillow. Extra credit to Marty for the next-to-last sentence, a bitter sneer at, he imagines, Obama’s and Brent Scowcroft’s expense. But just who is this Nader guy Peretz likes so much? A glance at his essay reveals sympathetic biographical details; also, a clever — by which I mean, devious — neoconservative take on Obama’s “loss of nerve.” The essay’s not nasty enough for Commentary and it’s too smart for The Weekly Standard; but Peretz’s rag is just right. Anyway… Institute of Strategic Studies… where have I seen that name? Ahhh, the time crapsule! Yep:

A FEARFUL ACCOUNTING The International Institute for Strategic Studies has released a comprehensive report detailing the stockpile of weapons of mass destruction currently available to the Iraqi government, and projecting how long it would take Iraq to develop on other weapons of mass destruction. This report is an eye-opener for anyone who still doubts that Saddam Hussein is a threat.

posted by Pejman at 9/09/2002 11:37:00 AM

Oh. Those guys. (Incidentally, Pejman’s site mysteriously vanished from blogger after the “Time Crapsule” post; IISS’s article, meanwhile, has been robots.txted for who knows how long.)

Before blaming Obama for an “emboldened” Iranian regime, Mousavizadeh concedes “[t]hat there are few lessons to be learned from the cheerleaders of the Iraq war… goes without saying.”

YA RLY.

I can’t think of one other country in the entire history of the world where right-wing pundits go on TV and pine for a devastating nuclear attack on their own country just so they can say they were right all along. Not even Iranian government officials, crazy as they are, sit around saying, “Y’know, I hope the infidels bomb the hell out of us just so we can expose the Reformists as a bunch of wimps.”

Like John, I’m rather enjoying the public spat going on between Steve Schmidt and Emperor Palpatine Bill Kristol. Here’s the good stuff:

William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard and at times an informal adviser to Sen. John McCain, touched off the latest back-and-forth Tuesday morning with a post on his magazine’s blog criticizing the Todd Purdum-authored Palin story and pointing a finger at Steve Schmidt, McCain’s campaign manager.

Kristol cited a passage in Purdum’s piece in which “some top aides” were said to worry about the Alaska governor’s “mental state” and the prospect that the Alaska governor may be suffering from post-partum depression following the birth of her son Trig. “In fact, one aide who raised this possibility in the course of trashing Palin’s mental state to others in the McCain-Palin campaign was Steve Schmidt,” Kristol wrote.

Asked about the accusation, Schmidt fired back in an e-mail: “I’m sure John McCain would be president today if only Bill Kristol had been in charge of the campaign.”

“After all, his management of [former Vice President] Dan Quayle’s public image as his chief of staff is still something that takes your breath away,” Schmidt continued.

It’s tough to know whom to root for in this fight, but if I had to choose, I gotta say I sympathize with Schmidt. Oh sure, he’s a sleazy GOP political operative who’s clearly trying to cover his ass for his own failings. But at the same time, Schmidt has actually had to, you know, do stuff in his career. He help Ah-nold get reelected in California. He was apparently the Bushies’ point man for getting Alito and Roberts confirmed. Of course, these aren’t admirable achievements, but they are achievements.

Meanwhile, what the hell has Bill Kristol ever done? Mostly he’s sat on his ass in the Weekly Standard office and advocated invading other countries. Christ, he even backed sending America’s armed forces to take down the damned Somali pirates — as though the Army doesn’t have enough wars to fight already.

The bottom line is this: imagine you’re Steve Schmidt. Imagine that you’ve worked your ass off to make John McCain into a semi-legitimate candidate for the presidency. And then imagine that this twerp from the Weekly Standard comes along and convinces McCain to pick as his running mate a crazy, narcissistic wingnut who is well known for stabbing her allies in the back and whose sole qualification for the vice presidency has been eating a moose. How the hell would you feel?

I mean, four years ago, I would have been too ashamed to post such a prediction anywhere, even if I were anonymously trolling over at Red State. Times do indeed change.

(Of course, now that the Democrats have all this power, they should probably do something positive with it. Because as we’ve seen over the past four years, American opinion can change extraordinarily quickly. And there’s no way I’m going to be able to deal with President Jeb Bush and Senator Bill O’Reilly in 2012 if I don’t have a public health care plan to choose from. Just sayin’.)

Poor Don Surber. Apparently he’s locked himself in his shack, barricading the door with various auto parts he found lying around his living room. He’s sitting in a corner clutching a .22 in one hand and three bottles of Tylenol in the other. “Obama will have to pry the Tylenol from my cold dead hands,” Surber keeps muttering to himself while pointing his rifle at the front door. Surber is certain that the FBI, the CIA, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, CNN, La Raza and The Poca, West Virginia Department of Park and Recreation are all amassed just outside his door, heavily-armed and waiting for the signal to burst through the door, guns ablaze, in order to take away his Tylenol.

Part of the reason why we keep returning to the deep well of the blog postings of this Pliny of Poca — other than to ridicule his personal appearance through the magic of Photoshop — is just that there are only a handful of wingnut bloggers who manage to maintain that perfect balance of laziness, stupidity and insanity that Surber does. In any given post, there are general only slightly fewer errors than there are vowels.

Take the “Obama is going to take my Tylenol” post that has Surber stockpiling Tylenol and guarding this stash with the .22 that he usually employs to shoot frogs in the crick behind his house when they get too noisy. Almost everything about it is just, well, wrong.

President Obama’s administration is weighing restrictions on buying Tylenol, Excedrin and other over-the-counter medications. More over-regulation by the government. If a prescription is required to get a Tylenol, that will up the cost of health care.

Just like Don, we’re only a few keystrokes away from the FDA document detailing the proposals under consideration. Unlike Don, we’re not too busy eating moonpies and swilling RC Cola to retrieve and read the document.

Now, lookie here, here’s a fascinating little tidbit in the report. The proposals that the Advisory Panel is considering were developed by the FDA’s Acetaminophen Hepatotoxicity Working Group in a report they released on February 26, 2008. And who was President then? Not Obama. So this really isn’t a reason to take a jab at Obama. Strrrrrike One!

And is one of the proposals under consideration requiring a prescription for Tylenol or taking it off the market? Nope. Strrrrrrrrike Two!!

There are about 200 acetaminophen-related deaths each year, Fox News reported.

Does the Fox News story that Surber links report that? Not so much. It doesn’t say anything at all about acetaminophen-related deaths. Strrrrrrike Three!!!

Okay, let’s have a heart and use the Beep Ball rules used for the visually impaired. That way Surber can have one more strike before he’s out.

Are there 200 acetaminophen-related deaths per year? Let’s roll the film of the FDA report in question:

Summarizing data from five different surveillance systems, there were an estimated 56,000 emergency room visits, 26,000 hospitalizations, and 458 deaths related to acetaminophen-associated overdoses per year during the 1990-1998 period.

Batter out.

I think it’s safe to say, yet again, that this will be another year in which the Pulitzer committee will take a pass on Surber.

June 8: David Letterman tells a joke about the Palin family, forcing conservatives to divert precious blogging resources away from Obama-bashing to defend the plucky Alaskans. A trial run of the diversionary tactics the MSM will soon use to help squash Iranian freedom?

June 13: Protests against the Iranian elections begin.

June 16: Obama refuses to credit America for Iranian uprising, proving once again that it is all about him.

June 24: South Carolina governor Mark Sanford admits to Argentinian affair, kicking off major MSM operations against Iran’s Green Revolution.

June 26: Michael Jackson dies. Liberal media blitzkrieg is now in full swing as unending wave of Jacko chyrons effectively trample the corpse of Neda into the dust.

June 28: Death of infomercial pitchman Billy Mays. Nascent Iranian democracy successfully nipped in the bud by media thugs.

Honduras Defends Its Democracy: Fidel Castro and Hillary Clinton object

Hugo Chávez’s coalition-building efforts suffered a setback yesterday when the Honduran military sent its president packing for abusing the nation’s constitution. It seems that President Mel Zelaya miscalculated when he tried to emulate the success of his good friend Hugo in reshaping the Honduran Constitution to his liking.

But Honduras is not out of the Venezuelan woods yet. Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya’s abuses, also wants him back in power. It will be a miracle if Honduran patriots can hold their ground.

This reminds me of Ralph Peters’ recent declaration that the American military should start actively slaughtering members of the American media in order to procure more favorable coverage:

Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media. Perceiving themselves as superior beings, journalists have positioned themselves as protected-species combatants. But freedom of the press stops when its abuse kills our soldiers and strengthens our enemies. Such a view arouses disdain today, but a media establishment that has forgotten any sense of sober patriotism may find that it has become tomorrow’s conventional wisdom.

Do you guys even understand what “democracy” means? Because to my way of thinking, it doesn’t involve military coups and violent censorship of the press. But that’s just me.

Shorter Power Stooges:

John Hinderaker, Powerline:
First Tommy Lee, Now John Edwards

• Pay no attention to Mark Sanford. Andrew Young says he found a tape showing John Edwards doing it doggy-style with Rielle Hunter

Paul Mirengoff, Powerline:
Update

• John, you ignorant slut. Who the fuck would believe somebody who stole a kid’s baseball cards?

Bonus Paul Mirengoff, Powerline:
The Roots of an Incoherent Policy

• Reality is a vastly over-rated foreign policy

Scott Johnson, Powerline:
Yo! Don’t Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ Foshizzle

• When Chief Justice John Roberts was in his twenties and working in the Reagan White House, he already saw the dangers of Negro “music” from the likes of Michael Jackson and Prince. How cool is that?

*Cf. (no. 91)

Above: Bathos, Portly F’artagnan

“It May Be Pointless, But at Least It’s Expensive”

• So, like I was saying, (mmmm, double fudge Yoo-Hoo) isn’t it funny how (glug glug) liberals are all like, ‘wah waahhh stop it!’ when America blows up Iraq and (farrrrrrrrrt-rt-t) tells its people how to live, but when it comes to (glug fart waft sniff nod smile) true imperialism — stuff like the Waxman-Markey bill inspiring other countries by example to do something about so-called “global warming” — liberals are all like, “yes, more please”. What a Double Stuf Ore — er, double standard!